A Close Shave
by tomato-greens
Summary: Stubbly romance? Romantic stubble? Whatever, it's silly and has kissing. Slash and het; canonical pairings, too. Written for the 2008 GO Exchange.


_Good Omens_ is, of course, the property of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and there's a line from _I Sing the Body Electric_, which is by Walt Whitman, not me! This was written for the Good Omens Exchange 2008, so many thanks to go_exchange for writing fanfic for the first time in a year!

---

"You've got stubble growing," said Aziraphale wonderingly.

"Hmm?" asked Crowley, who was lounging on one of the dusty chairs in the bookshop's back room and was more asleep than not.

"Stubble," Aziraphale insisted. "I don't think I've seen you anything but clean-shaven, dear boy."

"Don't be ridiculous," said Crowley, failing utterly to rouse himself. "I had a––a––a rather magnificent beard around 1832, you know."

"Well, you had been sleeping for thirty-odd years, you can't expect a body to maintain itself without a little help along," said Aziraphale. "You know, if you didn't insist on staying up so late, you wouldn't be yawning your way through conversations with me. It's really terribly impolite."

"Sorry. Anything but that." He moved in the chair, tilting his head farther back like he was trying to get comfortable(1). His sunglasses shifted; Aziraphale was very aggrieved to find that his eyes had fallen closed, if indeed they had ever been open in the first place.

"So, that begs the question: why the stubble?"

"That doesn't beg any question at all. Look, angel, if you're going to get on my case about my––my––" he yawned again, "something as emfrivolous/em as, as facial hair follicles, I may as well go to the flat and sleep where I'm comfortable."

"I don't think it's frivolous," said Aziraphale, "although it is, rather––"

Crowley stood up, the whole lean lanky length of him looking somehow dejected, and walked out of the shop. As the door closed behind him, the bell let out a demented jingle, a very small sound in a very empty room.

"Well, bugger," said Aziraphale.

---

Miles away, Newt Pulsifer was blushing.

"Hi," he said, when Anathema finally let go of him. "Welcome home."

"Hi," she said. Then she licked his chin. It made an uncomfortable rasping sound.

"How was the conference?" he asked, caressing her very pregnant belly.

"Same old, same old. Witches, covens, fires, dancing naked at midnight. That kind of thing. I _missed_ you," she said plaintively.

"I missed you, too."

"Couldn't even shave, could you?" she said. The skin around her eyes crinkled as she smiled, and something warm curled up under Newt's ribcage, stretching from his throat to the pit of his stomach. It was a little hard to swallow.

"Nope."

"Useless git you are, then," she said, but it was very gentle, and the tips of her fingers traced the sharp points of his jaw.

"Yes," he agreed happily, and kissed her.

---

"––ook, Crowley––oh, blasted thing. Crowley, I'm terribly sorry. Meet me at the shop later? I can try to––"

---

"Mister S!" said Madame Tracy.

"What d'ye want, ye painted Jezebel?" he barked(3).

"Don't you just look charming this evening! You look so very manly when you haven't shaved!" she said.

Shadwell grunted. He wasn't sure _charming_ was a good thing, though he had tried to clean off the parka with some old-fashioned, witch-finding elbow grease and a bit of tattered sponge. He shifted nervously; he was no longer a sergeant, but lifelong habits are hard to break.

He had _seen_, even. She only had the two.

He relaxed a little.

Madame Tracy beamed at him. She had taken special care with her appearance this evening; she thought the scarlet eyeshadow had been a rather nice touch. It matched both her lipstick and her handbag. She felt a little like a film star.

"Well," she said, fluttering her unnaturally dark eyelashes at him, "where would you like to go tonight?"

Shadwell grunted again. "Why?" he asked suspiciously.

Madame Tracy laughed. It sounded like bells, if the bells were small and shrilly and had a tendency to snort after a while. He felt his stomach, hot and nervous, flip over.

"You big old silly," she said. "We moved in a year ago, here, didn't we?"

"Mmmm," he said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

"I thought we might go out for a drive," she explained. "Unless, perhaps," she began, and she ran her nails up and down his arm, "you'd like to stay in for the day?"

"Aye, that's," he said, and cleared his throat. "That's all reet," he finished.

She grabbed his hand and dragged him across the bungalow, giggling girlishly.

---

The bell jingled for the first time since Crowley had left the shop in such a huff. It had been broken for seven months. Aziraphale started the coffee machine, cursing under his breath as he forgot the filter three times in a row.

---

"_An' I'll be the pirate captain, an' you can be the navi––you know, the chap who looks at the stars and finds out where we are so we can go to, to wherever the treasure is, an' you can be a hand on the poop deck, an' you––" Adam said, looking at Pepper. He may have been the Antichrist, but he had learned long ago that he was no match for Pepper's fury. "An' you can be first mate," he offered. Her freckles stood out against the flush of anger on her cheeks; she always wanted to be the captain––_

Adam woke up all at once, his eyes locked on the rotting ceiling of his apartment.

"Mmm?" said Pepper, stretching and resettling her arm across his chest.

"Nothing. Just a dream. Got me up."

She chuckled sleepily and reached up to kiss his neck; he heard the rasp of it and winced. "You," she said, "Adam Young, need to shave when we get up."

"All right," he said, because he never had to learn a lesson twice. But it was a lazy Saturday, no protest marches to attend, no picket signs to make, no cases to win(4), and really, Pepper pointed out as he tickled her belly, there was no reason why he had to do it right this second.

---

"Thanks," said Crowley. It was perfunctory, but it wasn't cold, and he was cupping his coffee as though he recognized it for the peace offering it was.

Aziraphale, rather pleased with himself, poured his own cup and sat on the other side of the ancient and threadbare settee he had rescued from the side of the road only that morning. It wasn't quite small, but it wasn't very large either. Aziraphale suddenly became very aware of their hips brushing against each other, his left to Crowley's right.

_It is curiously in the joints of his hips_, Aziraphale thought a little wildly. Crowley was clean-shaven again, but Aziraphale kept noticing his face anyway, the prominent cheekbones in relief against the shadows cast by his dark glasses, the line of his jaw no longer obscured.

He nervously removed the sunglasses, but Crowley only blinked twice in reaction.

They stayed uncomfortably silent for two refills and one customer; by the time Aziraphale bustled to the back room after he had convinced the man to buy nothing, Crowley had picked up a _Dorian_ and begun flipping through it.

"So," said Aziraphale, at an unusual loss for words.

"So," agreed Crowley, placing the book carefully on the table. "I shaved after you called. I thought you would approve." He turned his head to the left, to the right, and Aziraphale swallowed audibly.

"You did," said Aziraphale. He freed one hand and touched Crowley's knuckles. "You didn't have to, you know."

"But, angel, you said––" Crowley's face was flickering from confused to frustrated and back again.

"I know," said Aziraphale, "but it wasn't. I mean." He searched his brain and his throat for words, but one had gotten stuck in the other and he couldn't think, couldn't speak. "It wasn't––I was just surprised. It wasn't frivolous. It looked. It looked good."

"Now you tell me, sure," said Crowley. His voice was startlingly angry, but his face was pleasant when he leveled a small smile at Aziraphale, who raised a hand and dragged it down the curve of his jaw. Crowley made a surprised sound, but he didn't pull away.

"Sorry," Aziraphale said after a while, and flushed terribly. But

"Don't worry," said Crowley, and put his hand over Aziraphale's, which lay forlornly on his thigh. They sat there, until Aziraphale eventually shifted his head to Crowley's shoulder and, for the first time, fell asleep. He dreamt of shuffled wings and black hair and a crooked smile: what he liked best.

---

Miles away, Adam raised his head approvingly.

---

"You're right," said Crowley, after, rubbing at his jaw. "I've beard-burn, now."

"That's all right," said Aziraphale, and kissed him again. "It's worth it."

---

1. Unlikely, without a miracle or two (2). Aziraphale had specially ordered t he chairs long ago to prevent the ambush of a particularly persistent were a surprising nu,ber of older widowers and on particularly enthusiastic widow would do their best best to get into his––shop.

2. Or six. Aziraphale had experimented.

3. An affectionate bark, though, Madame Tracy was quite certain. She had once found an encyclopedia on dog behavior at a car boot sale while visiting a friend in Apsley; she'd had it among the soft toys for a while until one of her clients called it unsettling, and then she'd kept it for its lovely pictures. It was, Madame Tracy thought, divine luck itself that it provided a pretty direct translation of Shadwellian.

4. Adam had finally decided on criminal law, out of interest; he soon became known as one of the best solicitors in the country. He lost cases, but, he whispered to the Them, only because they had _deserved _it. He saved weekends for environmental activism, though, out of loyalty not solely to Pepper but to those who shared her passion: when Adam was yelling, people tended to listen.


End file.
